Voices of the Past
by The Red Dove
Summary: It had just started to prove his older brother he wasn't afraid of the old, haunted shack in the rotting wheat field.  It would only take five minutes!  Turns out, he would spend much longer, listening to the Voices of the Past.  Please Review!
1. Chapter 1

"Hey, Johnathan! Hurry it up!" Chris yelled to his younger brother.

"Okay, Chris! Why don't you come?" John asked.

"Because, I dared _you _to spend five minutes in there _alone_!"

John sighed, knowing his 17 year old brother just wanted to try to scare him. But John wasn't afraid. He could spend an entire night in that shack found in the wheat field, that people claimed was haunted. Many times, he heard stories of noises and voices, figures running through the wheat, only to be dragged back by two silent figures, which looked nothing like humans.

As he started running through the field, the blades of the tall grass rubbing his body in neither a pleasing nor irritating way, he spotted the old, graffiti-covered shack in the distance. Careful not to trip on any small objects the wheat might have been hiding, he sprinted towards the 'black hole of a shack.' "All right, let's get this over with." John muttered as he set his watch for five minutes, and reached for the handle, ready to prove that ghosts didn't reside here, and that if they did, they couldn't harm him.

He grabbed the handle and pulled.

It wouldn't budge.

Just as he reached for the handle again, it flung open with a force that would have pushed him back a few feet, had he not been fast enough to jump back and dodge the unexpected attack.

As quickly as it opened, it slammed shut again, creating a loud _**BANG! **_

"Whoa!" Chris yelled. "Did you see that?"

"Son of a-! God, Chris, when did you get here?"

"To see if you chickened out on me, man! Try to get in again."

John sighed, but not wanting to seem weak to his older brother, reached for the handle for a third time.

It opened as any regular door should.

"What the...how did-?" John stuttered, when Chris shoved him in. John fell onto the floor of the shack as Chris started laughing, when some eerie lights started to flicker on in the small room, revealing what appeared to be an elevator.

Chris and John froze in place.

The door started to close, and John looked at Chris in a scared expression, forgetting that he didn't want to look weak, and begged for help with his piercing blue eyes.

Chris just looked in shock at him and backed away slowly, his turning form running away from the small shack his brother was being trapped in.

That was the last thing John saw before the door closed, and the elevator started to descend.

"Chris is...he's just getting some Vorts to come help me, or maybe Aunt Cleo! He wouldn't leave me here!"

He could have sworn he heard a feminine voice chuckle softly, softly saying in an eerily calm, cold voice, "He's not coming back."

He shuddered and watched as the gray walls moved upwards, once in a while breaking apart to reveal large, gray rooms, some of which he heard innocent, child-like voices calling out in a cold, singsong, almost calming way.

"Who's there?"

"Could you come over here?"

"Hello, friend."

He shrank to the sides of the elevator and slid to a sitting position on the floor, once again hearing that first voice chuckling softly again, as if she was softly reassuring him in a motherly way that everything was _not _going to be all right.

After a few more minutes of the small, innocent voices calling out to him, the elevator started slowing down, soon coming to a smooth stop in a giant, gray room, with a circular shape to it. He stepped out of the elevator cautiously, going down the small steps that led to the center of the room and looked around.

"If there are any spirits down here, I mean no disrespect, and I don't mean to trespass into your area." he recited, as he learned from old books to never insult the dead.

The chuckle bounced around the empty room quietly, and for once, John would have admitted it to anyone, even his brother:

He was afraid.

John walked around in the inner circle, looking frantically for a way of escape, remembering that the buttons on the elevator didn't provide words, stating 'up' or 'down', and he didn't want to accidentally push one that should have read 'self-destruct' or anything similar.

In his frantic searching, he nearly missed the writing on the wall.

He quickly yanked his head back, staring at the ominous red lettering.

_This way ~_

He ran towards the helpful hint, and noticed a panel slightly out of place, overlapping another, leaving a small gap. John placed his fingers in the gap and pulled, taking off the panel and crawling through the opening the lack of panel provided.

When the ceiling finally gave enough room for him to stand in, he did so, taking in his bearings. It looked like an old janitor's closet, with the pipes and all, but the eerie orange glow in place of a wall was screaming at John, "Not normal."

Something else also caught his eye. He saw smaller panels with stick people and various other decorations on them scattered across the floor, as well as some cans which read 'beans' and some jugs of some sort. He also noticed the computer parts, and in one of the computer bodies, he saw a pot resting in one.

As he picked up the pot, something else caught his eye.

Drawings. Wherever the orange glow wasn't and walls were in there rightful place, drawings covered the walls. Drawn quite obviously by the person who helped him find this place. He saw some cubes on the walls, some lady in an orange jumpsuit seemed to be quite popular, some oval-shaped things, quoting the phrases he heard while he was coming down here, and writing which was so messy, he couldn't really read it.

_"You're not going the right way..." _a cold, robotic voice called out to him.

He looked once more to find a way out, and noticed another small passageway, leading John to something that would change his life forever.

* * *

><p><strong>If you would kindly review, that would be AWESOME!<strong>

**So yeah. Review. Please. Now. REVIEW!**

**Well, if you're busy, I might understand, and I'll be okay with that, but if you manage to take some time away from your daily procrastination, that would be most appreciated.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Okay, FangirlyNeko. You're awesome. So I might as well dedicate a chapter to you. Hope you enjoy!**

**PS She's not the only one who has to review.**

* * *

><p>John was lost. He looked around frantically, trying to find out where he was, but he knew that wasn't possible. This was his first time in the place, how could he know where anything was?<p>

He watched as panels seemed to move on their own, by which he assumed was a poltergeist. Machines fully operational, but he knew that this facility has been shut down for about 300 years, so it must have been some sort of ghost activity.

At least, that's what he wanted to believe.

"Could you come over here?" one of the childlike voices pleaded. John, assuming this was a lost soul searching for help, tried talking.

"I can't see you, dear." He said. "But I can hear you, what's your name, little one?" he tried to ask.

"Where are you?" she begged.

"I'm right here, follow my~"

He noticed a red dot moving around on the wall.

A spirit orb?

John walked over to it slowly. "I'm coming, love." he called. "Just hang on."

He moved to the light, only to notice that it disappeared, but that would mean that it really was some sort of light behind him~

"Hello, friend."

John turned around, to see one of the oval shaped things he saw drawn on the walls of the weird-looking janitor's closet, with a laser coming from its eye, aiming at his chest.

John quickly jumped out of the way as soon as he heard what he thought he might~gunshots.

After he ducked behind the wall, the voice called out to him yet again.

"Come back! I'm sorry! I don't blame you."

The dot on the wall drifted to a stop in the center, and John let out the breath he had held, and when he inhaled~

Pain.

He screamed and looked down, to see that he had been hit five times right in his rib area. He clutched it, to stop the bleeding, when he noticed that there was no more blood coming out of it. Hesitantly, he looked into his wounds, to find that he could still see the bullets, just sitting there inside of him, not shattered or squished, his wounds open to reveal the still shiny bullets, but the area outside the wound was splattered with his own blood. It was as if the bullet pierced his skin, pushed some blood out, then just stayed there.

He remembered reading in a book about sucking the wound to get the bullet out, and he remembered that he didn't even know if it worked, but he decided he may as well try it.

So he did, and the bullet did come out, painfully, but as soon as it was out, blood started to slowly flow from the wound, and John almost threw up at the sight of that.

"Oh, you've managed to injure yourself. Sorry about that. Why don't you come to the Medical Bay and I'll treat those for you." the soft, metallic voice demanded, rather than asked.

John, in too much pain to not refuse any help of any kind, decided to defy his human instinct and follow the blue bridge that had appeared out of nowhere and walked, slowly and painfully, across the bridge, trying not to look down.

After a while, he came across an elevator, which he hopped in and waited as it brought him up to the Medical Bay.

He noticed that the pain was starting to fade, instead an unbearable numbness taking over. It wasn't painful, but it just annoyed him so much that it might as well hurt.

The elevator glided to a stop, and John found it hard to move his legs, the numbness spreading to his limbs.

"It's all right, just like walking when your leg's asleep." he reassured himself, knowing he was enhancing the truth.

He had just been shot, there was no way his leg fell asleep. These two things were entirely unrelated.

He had just made it to the white bed in the center of the room. He laid across it, not bothering to put the covers over himself, wondering just what would happen now.

"Hold still." the robotic voice called. "The name's GLaDOS, by the way."

John nodded, and GLaDOS scolded him. "I just TOLD you not to move!"

Instead of saying sorry, he just did as GLaDOS told him to do.

After a while, he felt a little better, and started to sit up.

"Take it easy, tiger." the voice mocked. "The nanobots aren't quite finished yet.

John laid back down again, and after five minutes, GLaDOS instructed him to sit up.

"How are you feeling?" she asked in that fake, cold motherlike tone.

"Better." John replied.

"Your name was John, wasn't it?" GLaDOS asked.

"Yeah. Are you a spirit?" John asked.

GLaDOS' laugh almost seemed warm as it bounced around the walls.

"No, John. Here, I'll show you."

The bed started to move towards a wall, which opened as he neared it, and he came into a large room, similar to the one he arrived in, to see a giant robot hanging from the ceiling, wires dangling everywhere from the massive body.

The lowest part of the body turned to John, large yellow light in the center, and seemed to look him up and down.

"I'm GLaDOS." the machine stated.


	3. Chapter 3

**...Five reviews? That's about...twice as many reviews as there are chapters! lol**

**My wrists are still sore from updating my other stories, but here you go!**

* * *

><p>"Gladys?" John asked.<p>

"GLaDOS." the computer corrected. "I'm an AI, and if you don't know what that means..."

"No, I know. I just thought you were a ghost at first. I thought this place was haunted."

GLaDOS internally smirked. This kid could provide entertainment, and GLaDOS had been bored for years now.

"It might be." GLaDOS suggested, hoping the boy would fall for it. "You tell me what you need for equipment, and I'll make it for you." GLaDOS suggested, hoping the boy didn't catch on her taunting.

"Would you?" he asked.

"Of course." she replied, trying hard not to broadcast her laughter.

The boy smiled. "I'm John. I'm 12 years old."

"Wow." GLaDOS said with mock surprise. "You're catching up to me."

"Really?" John asked excitedly.

"Slowly but surely." GLaDOS replied.

John laughed a little, and described the devices he would need. An EVP recorder. A spirit box. An infrared camera. John figured that this was all he would really need, seeing as cameras were everywhere, but GLaDOS gave him a regular camera as well, which she modified into his glasses, and placed a chip in each of the devices, so that she could hear/see what John did. Just to humor him. There was no way this place was haunted. Ghosts didn't exist.

"Are you ready?" GLaDOS asked as she summoned an elevator.

John poked at his ribs, which were now healed up. "Yes." he jumped into the elevator. "Chris is gonna be so jealous, and he won't think I'm a wimp anymore!"

"No he won't." GLaDOS agreed, handing him some long fall boots, and a portal device. "This you will need to move around down there." she motioned with her optic to the ASHPD. "And you'll know what these are for shortly." she motioned to the boots, which were already on John's feet.

John stepped into the elevator. GLaDOS then told the elevator its orders...

And the floor dropped from beneath John.

GLaDOS chuckled as she heard him scream for a while down, before his voice was completely inaudible to the AI anymore, which shocked her because she had amazing hearing sensors.

She simply imitated a shrug and brought all of her attention back to the testing robots, waiting for John to land.

He might discover something Chell didn't down there, that might ease the Something eating at her 'insides', and finally put Caroline at ease. GLaDOS was getting annoyed with whatever Caroline was feeling. For all GLaDOS knew, it was probably a To-do post-it-note that she forgot in her old desk countless decades ago.

Humans were so troublesome.

* * *

><p><strong>Sorry, that's all for now. Need more motivation...<strong>


End file.
